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They say it happened in the hallway of an old tenement along Walnut at 3:30 a.m., wounding three people.

One of them was 50-year-old Renee Cooper, who was sitting in a white, plastic chair trying to gather some cooler air on the sidewalk.

She caught some shrapnel to the foot.

Like a 12-year-old girl last Saturday night in Price Hill, she is an innocent victim hit by a stray bullet.

We talked about the street shootings today with Barbara Snell, who watches it all with the misery of a mother who lost a son to senseless street violence.

Quentin Snell, 21, was shot to death this past Memorial Day weekend.

Home from the University of Toledo, he had gone to the Taste of Cincinnati, then went with his cousin to Cumminsville to give someone a ride.

"Wasn't no drugs involved," Snell's mother said. "It was innocent. He's up there picking up somebody to go back down to the Taste of Cincinnati."

She says her son sensed something wasn't right and was leaving when the gunfire occurred.

"He told his cousin, 'Come on, let's get out of here,' He didn't feel right. Then, the boy started shooting and shot my son in the head," Snell said.

The distance between deadly and dumb luck is hard to measure when it comes to gunplay.

Across from Cooper, a stray bullet went through a door last year, barely missing the head of an unsuspecting man inside.

Neither one would talk about it.

The city's interim police chief, however, spoke about the need to focus as much attention as possible on the city's violent crime.

"My hope is, yes, it's going to have a positive impact on violent crime, it's going to have a positive impact on homicides," said Interim Police Chief Paul Humphries about the procedural changes he is implementing on Sunday.

There have been 41 homicides so far this year, but last year at this time there were 25.

With fewer officers due to retirements and budget restraints, the command staff is changing how they handle burglar alarms, minor accidents and some property crimes.

Police say there are times when some nonviolent crime scenes have nothing further to offer when it comes to solving a case.

A closure letter form will be provided to victims with instructions on what to do if new information becomes available.

For traffic accidents where no one is hurt and there is no impairment issue, officers will have the parties involved fill out a state accident report and leave the rest to be sorted out by the insurance companies.

Since 70 percent of burglar alarms turn out to be false, police will now require alarm companies to have two separate numbers to contact a homeowner.

Police estimate thousands of staff hours will be freed up as a result of these changes, which have been implemented in other cities such as Dayton, Columbus and Milwaukee.

"We want officers to be able to go, when they leave that district that day, where hot spots are, where crime is occurring, what's going on, who the bad guys are, where to focus," Humphries said. "We want them to be able to go there instead of having to make three auto accidents on the way that takes up half of their day."

The idea of shifting some procedures predates the recent spike in violent crime.

But the command staff hopes the communities affected by street level gun crimes will benefit from the timing of its implementation.